Marilyn Monroe, her life and death, with reactions from Bernard Frazella in Paris, Ken Bernstein in Buenos Aires, Irving R. Levine in Rome, Cecil Brown in Tokyo, Roy Neal in Hollywood, Director George Cukor, L.A. County's coroner Theodore Kurphy, Life Magazine associate editor Richard Merrimen (interviewed by Frank McGee on the day of Monroe's death Aug. 5th), Photographer Milton Greene, Author Pete Martin, Ray Shearer and psychologist Dr. Cornelia B. Wilbur. In addition, there are comments from Marilyn Monroe who speaks lovingly about her passion for the silver screen. This radio documentary report was broadcast three days after Marilyn Monroe's death. Leon Pearson hosts and narrates.

These first live NBC News Bulletins by Don Pardo would precede regular program cancellations and continuous NBC live coverage of this 20th century tragedy (the assassination of President John F. Kennedy) for the next three and a half days. The first two bulletins are heard. Bulletin number one (Local in NYC) is broadcast at 1:45:03 PM EST and airs for 30 seconds. Bulletin number two (National) is broadcast at 1:46:42 and airs for 68 seconds, followed by the first two hours of uninterrupted News coverage with NBC anchors Bill Ryan, Chet Huntley and Frank McGee. Seventy-one hours and twenty-seven minutes of continuous coverage begins on NBC at 1:53 PM with CBS and ABC both starting their live continuous coverage at 2 PM. There are live telephone reports from correspondent Robert MacNeil in Dallas, Texas. There are additional reports from Charles Murphy, David Brinkley and Marvin Agronsky. There is live coverage from the United Nations where the Secretary General expresses sorrow to all members of the Kennedy Family and to all the people in the United States. One minute of silence is observed by all delegates from the 111 member nations. There is continuing NBC coverage from station WBAP, the affiliate in Fort Worth, Texas with Newsman Tom Whalen. Eyewitness Charles Brehm recounts what he saw. There is the first live overseas report from Irving R. Levine from Rome and live coverage from outside the NBC building at Rockefeller Center, with its Mobile Unit searching out reactions from New Yorkers with reporter Jeff Pond. Correspondent Richard Valeriani reports live from the White House. There are statements from Senator Barry Goldwater and from former President, Dwight D. Eisenhower. It took an incident of this proportion to catapult television into the forefront as the world's number one communicator of news and special events. Television had come of age.
Because in 1963 it took an NBC camera 11 minutes to become "active," transmitting a visual signal, an NBC Bulletin Card was viewed at first by those tuning in to this station. It was chaotic on NBC where staff announcer Don Pardo made the first mention of the shooting. News reporter Frank McGee was pressed into service and was receiving his information over the phone from correspondent Robert McNeil in Dallas. NBC's television coverage, although informative, did not match the gravitas of Walter Cronkite at his desk at CBS Television, who would be visually seen on the air beginning at 2:00 pm Eastern Standard Time, informing the country of the death of the president as he removed his glasses and struggled with his emotions.
Surprisingly, in the end, more people tuned into NBC’s coverage, anchored by Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, than Walter Cronkite and the CBS crew. It would be several years before Cronkite was able to overtake NBC’s popular anchor duo in the ratings.
NOTE:
The first two NBC Television Bulletins (the first local WNBC, and the second National NBC) and the initial 3:53 seconds of continuous NATIONAL coverage commencing at 1:53 PM EST was never recorded by NBC or by any other known broadcasting station or broadcasting archive. Amazingly, the only existing broadcast recording in the world of NBC'S TV historic television transmission was audio recorded off the air by Phil Gries, founder of Archival Television Audio, Inc., viewing his 1949 Andrea television at that moment, and fortuitously pushing the record button on his Webcor Stereophonic 1/4" reel to reel audio tape recorder during the actual live Television Broadcast. To date, no other audio or video has ever surfaced documenting these moments.
These historic sound tracks have been donated to the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, MA, The Library of Congress in Washington D.C. and The Paley Center for Media in NY and LA. The November 22, 1963 John F. Kennedy NBC-TV assassination bulletins and the initial lost 3:53 seconds of NBC live coverage are the most significant treasure in our archive. They personify just a part of the many thousands of other Archival Television Audio original, off the air, television soundtracks which represent the only record of a specific TV broadcast known to exist. Archival Television Audio, Inc. is the largest repository in the world collecting, preserving and archiving "lost" vintage TELEVISION BROADCASTS surviving as AUDIO ONLY, focusing and representing the years 1946 thru 1982. The ATA website (www.atvaudio.com) initiated in 2002 offers the public access to searching for tens of thousands of programs by title, performer, and date.